The Great Divide

for Violoncello and electronics | 9:40 | 2023

At its core, The Great Divide draws inspiration from the psychological and aesthetic world of Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan. The duality at the heart of that film—the tension between control and abandon, purity and distortion—informs the architecture of the music. Like the Black and White Swans, the electronic tape and the cello begin as distinct voices, each moving through their own expressive terrain before ultimately converging into a shared, fragile unity.

The electronic layer is sculpted to have a presence of its own, hovering near the acoustic cello without ever mimicking it. Influences from Kaija Saariaho and Salvatore Sciarrino echo in the use of natural harmonics and delicate noise textures, inviting the cello to blur the lines between pitch and timbre, gesture and grain. Harmonics are gently "impurified" through extended bowing techniques, allowing the instrument to breathe, shimmer, and unravel.